Short abstract:

The workshop aims at exploring postsocialist transformations through changes in the personal lives of Eastern Europeans.

Long abstract:

This year anniversary of 20 years since the end of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe was unanimously celebrated as the triumph of liberty, of the peoples against oppression, of capitalism over communism. Still, 1989 constituted a watershed in the lives of millions of Eastern Europeans, a world event that induced major changes and had complex consequences for people's biographies. Rather than taking the triumphant perspective of the victory of democracy and capitalism, neither the opposite vision of the advancement of oppressive neo-liberalism, this panel proposes to analyze the 1989 change as a source of crises in personal lives of Eastern Europeans. We propose to see these crises as complex moments when larger economic, political and historical processes intertwine with personal trajectories, opening or closing the horizon of possibilities of shaping one's life. We invite contributions that explore ethnographically post-socialist transformations focusing on critical moments in personal lives, such as: changes in professional trajectories, loss/(re)gain of social and political status, religious conversion, accountability of one's participation in or collaboration with the communist regimes, and other critical experiences people were confronted with in their everyday lives.